INTRODUCTION

This Javascript applet allows for controlling and monitoring the power management mode and temperature of AMD/ATI graphics cards.

It only works with the free Xorg radeon driver and requires at least a 2.6.35 kernel.

It does NOT work with the proprietary fglrx driver.

INSTALLATION

Before installing/using the applet, some system configuration steps must be accomplished. As root (or with sudo), the following files must be made writable for all users. This will allow any user to change the power management settings of the card :

Also as root, you must mount the debug file system. This will allow the applet to display frequencies and voltage information (if it doesn't work, you may need to make sure that normal users can navigate and read the debug file system) :

plasmapkg -t plasmoid -i radeon-pm.plasmoid

CONFIGURATION

- Dynamic : dynamically changes the clocks based on the number of pending fences, so performance is ramped up when running GPU intensive apps, and ramped down when the GPU is idle. The reclocking is attemped during vertical blanking periods, but due to the timing of the reclocking functions, doesn't not always complete in the blanking period, which can lead to flicker in the display. Due to this, dynpm only works when a single head is active.

- Low : forces the gpu to be in the low power state all the time. Note that low can cause display problems on some laptops; this is why auto does not use low when displays are active.

- Mid : forces the gpu to be in the mid power state all the time. The low power state is selected when the monitors are in the dpms off state.

- High : forces the gpu to be in the high power state all the time. The low power state is selected when the monitors are in the dpms off state.

- Automatic : selects between mid and high power states based on the whether the system is on battery power or not. The low power state are selected when the monitors are in the dpms off state.

- Default : uses the default clocks and does not change the power state. This is the default behavior.

In the applet settings dialog, you can set the following values :

- Device directory : path to the device directory. This directory must contain the power_method and power_profile files. This directory should also contain a hwmon subdirectory for temperature monitoring.

- Temperature monitor path : path to the temperature monitor file. This file should be in a sub-subdirectory of the device directory (something like hwmon/hwmon0), and is usually called temp1_input (or something like that...).

- Show low power mode button : since this mode can cause display problems, use it at your own risk.

- Delay between updates : this sets the elapsed time (in seconds) between updates.

- Remember power mode : if checked, the last selected power management mode will be applied the next time the applet is loaded. This can be tricky for some setups (like mine) where the lowest power mode does not work well when the laptop is docked and hooked up to an external screen.

Changelog:

1.7
Corrected a bug with some non persistent configuration options

1.6
Made the script a bit more robust when dealing with incomplete radeon_pm_info data

1.5
Tried to consolidate some workarounds. If you don't have problems, there's no need to update.

1.4
worked around a problem with some settings being forgotten under KDE 4.6.x (if you don't have this problem, you may want to stick to the 1.3 version, which is also included in the download) and added X-Plasma-NotificationArea=true (the plasmoid can now be added to the notification area).

1.3
added actual low power mode (optional) and updated readme with power mode descriptions from Xorg

1.2
frequencies are now displayed in MHz (suggested by Fisiu. It does look much better indeed).

Once again I am back using this plasmoid

This plasmoid is the gift of gold to all Linux users who stand by the OSS radion driver.

J, is there anything that needs to be done to keep it up to date?
Would it make sense to try to write some systemd/cpufreq interface instead of directly writing to the files (which I think that it does)

Re: Once again I am back using this plasmoid

Hi,

I'm not sure about cpufreq (isn't it dedicated to cpu power management ?).

Systemd being an init replacement, I don't think it would be of use here (unless you want a daemon that scales the frequencies based on various conditions, but this is way beyond the scope of this simple applet).

About the "pseudo-files" this applet writes to, they are (but my knowledge might not be so up-to-date) the only userspace interface to access radeon power management. Even a power management daemon would need to use this interface (and thus write to the files).

Changing power mode doesn't work anymore

Thank you for this neat tool. It's very helpful.
I've been using version 1.4 of this plasmoid for my Mobility Radeon HD 4200 on Fedora 15-17. I was able to change power mode, although there was no device info (as I understood, because of other output and less info available for Mobility cards) and it had visual bug with button size (for all KDE versions that I used - 4.7-4.9).
In v1.7 the buttons are now placed correctly and it shows the current engine clock. But when trying to change the power mode I get the following error:Quote:

Re: Re: Re: Changing power mode doesn't work anymo

I'll try to fix bugs when possible (as long as they don't depend on actually having a radeon card) but I won't add or change features.

Regarding the memory clock, the script does look for the "current memory clock" line and does nothing if the line isn't there. If you want to display the memory frequency, you can edit the main.js file again, go to line 197 and replace "current m" by "default m".

Good radeon control widget

It works nice on Chakra Linux with my HD 4870 but on openSUSE the two commands reset it self after restart and the widget lose control
chmod a+w /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_method
chmod a+w /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile

I tried with su as super user in Konsole and sudo it works after the two commands but they are reseted after every reboot.

Re: Re: Re: Good radeon control widget

After a bit googling, I found out that Opensuse has another file that's executed on each boot, though it's executed much earlier in the boot sequence than rc.local. Still, you could try putting the commands in there :

How do you like Plasma 5? The best KDE Desktop ever. Definitely a nice improvement. Not decided yet. Haven't tried it yet. I do not like some of the changes. KDE is taking the wrong way. I am still sticking with KDE 3.5. I have no opinion, but wanted to vote anyway.

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